03 September 2014 1:22 PM

'Copenhagen' and 'King Lear'

Here’s a brief appreciation of a performance of Michael Frayn’s play ‘Copenhagen’, which I saw last night at Oxford’s sparkling new Mathematics Institute. Alas, I missed the 111 Theatre Company’s earlier plays on scientific themes, ‘Emilie – La Marquise du Chatelet defends her life tonight’ and ‘Trumpery’, a drama about Charles Darwin and his rival Wallace.

I used to go to see any play Michael Frayn wrote, and still read any book he published – but as a non-Londoner with a fairly frantic life I’d missed ‘Copenhagen’ on its first outing and, though much taken with the subject, had never previously seen it.

I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. It’s about an actual, but mysterious meeting between two of the greatest scientific minds of all time. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, mediated by the often acid commentaries of Bohr’s highly perceptive wife Margrethe (one of the best female parts I’ve seen lately in film or theatre). Both men had become friends during the near-legendary period of international scientific excitement in the 1920s, when for a short while scientists believed they might actually be going to explain everything, and young men ran to the laboratory early in the morning, so enthralled were they by their work.

Heisenberg, by the way, is played by Alexander Rain, who manages to look marvellously like the German genius, Bohr is played by Michael Taylor and Margrethe Bohr by Katherine Jones. All three create an extraordinary tension on the austere stage, and for much of the time quite a lot of the audience seemed to be holding their breath as three clever people wittily and pungently debated some of the most tremendous subjects man can address, while an old friendship collapsed into ashes and ruins. Bohr was a very good man who lived well and courageously. By contrast, there’s a lot you can say against Heisenberg, if you like to think of yourself as being faultless and wholly courageous. But there’s quite a lot to be said for him as well. And, to irritate the silly atheists who think that science negates religion, Heisenberg made a couple of remarks that seem to me to be relevant to this debate. Remember, this comes from a man who had looked deep inside the architecture of the universe, equipped with powers of understanding most of us cannot help to possess:

‘In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.’

And: ‘The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.’

If I have understood the rather tough second half of the play rightly, it confirms a view I have long held, that the human mind holds back from discoveries it does not wish to make, or fears to make. This is usually because they will lose us friends or destroy happy certainties with doubt. This is why we do not change our minds very often. In this case, the fear was even deeper or greater. It’s a very satisfying explanation of why Germany never got very far in developing an atom bomb, despite Heisenberg’s brilliance. I would like to think it was true.

This was the second play I managed to see during the Oxford summer, the first being a performance (by the Globe company) of ‘King Lear’, in the unrivalled setting of the Bodleian Library courtyard, a building exactly contemporary with Shakespeare. The Globe have mastered a technique of concentrating Shakespeare, with very few frills or costumes and on a stage nearly as austere as the Mathematical institute. It’s all pretty informal – Shanaya Rafaat, who plays an unusually seductive (and so particularly wicked) Regan came and chatted to the audience before the play began.

Perhaps it’s because these productions are so spare that the force of the words comes through very hard. Lear is crammed with passages that haunt the mind (How sharper than a serpent’s tooth…’ ‘As flies to wanton boys…’ but is above all about the amazing capacity of men to believe their enemies are their friends, and to be beguiled by oily flattery and displeased by truthful love (how else could the Tory party have survived so long).

Then there is its limitlessly sad closing line (so powerful for each generation as we discover too late that our fathers and mothers were seeking so hard to communicate their experience to us, and we were too busy and arrogant to pay attention): ‘We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long’.

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King Lear is a wonderful, wonderful play utterly harrowing and insightful, iambic pentameter at its most beautiful, (Hamlet aside.) It was not until 1838 that the original ending was reinstated, theatrical directors of the past thought Shakespeare's intended ending to be too dark.

Peter Preston - thanks for that comment. (Hey, you forgot to address it to our host first - sorry, only joking!)

I'm not sure what a spellcheck is, I hope I haven't got one! But I'll put it to the test now: I understand your irritation (if you were irritated, I mean) at having 'premisses' spelt 'premises'. That sort of thing ought not to happen!

But as I wasn't sure I looked up the word some time ago in one of my dictionaries (Chambers, I think it was) and it was that the word could be "premise" or "premiss". - Do you see a difference? - John always spells it as 'premise', so I followed suit. (Gosh -as an afterthought, perhaps John is suffering from spellchecking too!)

On "arguments" I must pass. I'll leave you to ponder over what I meant. I thought it was fairly clear.

"If you draw up a list of arguments for or against, say, capital punishment, I think you will find that you end up with a list of propositions. Which, in my humble opinion, just goes to show that, like so many words in the English language, the word "argument" may have more that one meaning in everyday usage."

Of course it has but when you write, sir:

"But much as I enjoy responding to and correcting the false arguments against atheism by anyone - religious or not - , as I said, I really do hate quibbling over semantics"

do you really by "responding to and correcting the false arguments" mean nothing more mentally demanding than taking part in a kind of "'yes it is/'no it isn't" contest with those who advance the propositions which you cite?

Do you not rather in that context mean by "argument" the process of arriving at a reasoned conclusion from a set of pre-stated premisses?
An "argument" is no more a mere "list of propositions" than a car is a mere heap of component parts. An argument implies a group of propositions just as a car implies a number of component parts but in both cases they have to put together by skilled mechanics before the one can be called a car and the other an argument.

Thank you, by the way, for recognising that those who find fault with atheism need not be 'believers', in the sense in which you seem to mean that word.

Incidentally I find that, although I try to spell the word "premisses" with three "s" s, either my or someone else's 'spell-check' facility seems to be suffering from a kind of dyslexia and constantly 'corrects' it - in error of course - to "premises". If that happens this time, kindly disregard the 'correction' and read instead "premisses" (with a double "ss" and then the usual plural "s" at the end.).
I'm sure the spell-check means well but, as you know, a spell-check is only as good as the fellow who put it together. Garbage in, garbage out", as they say of computing.

Peter Preston - I have an aversion to quibbling over semantics. But, since you started it, I feel I must respond. You say that "by no stretch of logic" can the "mere propositions" I cited be called arguments. I'd disagree. If you draw up a list of arguments for or against, say, capital punishment, I think you will find that you end up with a list of propositions. Which, in my humble opinion, just goes to show that, like so many words in the English language, the word "argument" may have more that one meaning in everyday usage. - But much as I enjoy responding to and correcting the false arguments against atheism by anyone - religious or not - , as I said, I really do hate quibbling over semantics.

Contributor Mr Bunker, whom I thank for kindly replying and responding to my request for further details, having first alluded to two comments:

(1) "...Athiests believe in extinction ..."

and

(2) ".." despite their claims to the contrary, atheists have no morality and are selfish.""

then goes on with refreshing and characteristic candour to write:

"Those are just two of the false arguments (presumably) by believers."

Was it then quite fair, sir, to write - as you had earlier - of people of atheistic persuasion "rejecting false arguments by believers"?

As your candid adverb "(presumably)" indicates, whether the two propositions which you offer above were advanced by "believers" at all is itself a matter of mere presumption.
Moreover the two propositions thus advanced are mere propositions; by no stretch of logic could they be called "arguments".

When I asked you for more specific instances of what you had called "false arguments by believers", I was asking for "arguments" involving some trace of reasoning from pre-stated premises to a conclusion.
May I reply to your postscript, sir, by pointing out that any contributions which I may make to this forum are addressed firstly to Peter Hitchens, who is after all our host and whose 'forensic' hospitality we enjoy, and secondly, if they are a response to some earlier contribution, to the author of that contribution.
I hope that that may explain why you may sometimes be referred to first as a “third person” and then as a “second person”.

"religion never explained science or told us how big and glorious the universe is.

In fact it often warned us against meddling in it."

Well, if it comes to that, sir, the sciences themselves - or their currently fashionable apotheosis "Science" - never explained anything either except in - and on - its own terms. 'Science' will, of course, eventually 'explain' everything, because explaining things is its business; it is what it does and, I must say, it does it very eloquently but only, of course, for the faithful, for whom the axioms on which its explanations are given are accepted as being self-evidently true propositions, even by those who lack the experience and technical skills for testing their veracity.

As for the 'meddling' with the universe which you mention, sir, if ever such a warning was given, the history of the last hundred years or so and the sheer globality of the horrors which that ill-starred movement has - presumably unwittingly - made practicable for unregenerate human beings has, I suggest, proved its caution prudent and wise.

Mr Bunker, if I have interpreted his words aright, seems to suggest that those of atheistic persuasion be engaged in "rejecting false arguments by believers" adding "that,I suggest, is perfectly understandable and perfectly legitimate."

Undoubtedly it would be, sir, if you would kindly specify more precisely some of the "false arguments by believers" to which you here refer, indicating also, of course, in what particulars you find them to be false.

In the current edition (now on the web) of Radio 4's 'A Point of View', Lisa Jardine discusses 'Copenhagen', including her family connections with its protagonists, in the context of fictional perspectives for the historian.

John Vernau - thank you for your kind comment on the other thread. My story at least thas the advantage of being true - I have little time for fiction anyway.

You now intimate that a rejection of the idea of free will and the sanctity of life is somehow of an atheistic nature. I don't agree. As a convinced atheist I think we do have free will (i.e. we are not robots determined in our behaviour by a chain of cause and effect). And I also believe in the sanctity of life - more so, in fact, than many Christians (some on this blog) who wish to kill fellow human beings if they have (been found guilty of having) committed murder. So much for the seriousness of their pontifications about "sanctity of life". I, the pesky atheist, do take it seriously.

You may also wish that atheists would "keep their materialistic faith to themselves and not insist on trying to make proselytes of the rest of us".

Well, of course I respect your wish. But I don't recall any atheist going around trying to 'spread atheism'. Defending non-belief against criticism (such as that implied in your comment), certainly. And rejecting false arguments by believers too. But that, I suggest, is perfectly understandable and perfectly legitimate.

I also fail to understand why you, it appears, somehow regard " faith in the dogma that everything can, and will, be known and understood" as typically atheistic. Because it is not. If anything it is the exact opposite - namely a religious trait. God is the explantion- no need for further questions. The rational atheist will humbly admit his ignorance of the ultimate mysteries of our existence.

“Interesting that the German atomic programme was disrupted by the strategic bombing campaign's destruction of several of the factories and labs connected with it. A case of attacking the known or unknown unknowns given the paucity of targeting information available during wartime.”.

The Germans never got close to designing a fission bomb as they grossly overestimated the amount of material needed to produce a critical mass. They did, however, spend a lot of time and money researching a fusion bomb ignited by conventional explosives; this has long been considered an impossibility. They would have been much better employed putting their efforts into the manufacture of V2 rockets and perfecting the even deadlier V3 against which, no country within range had any defense.

According to Mr Hitchens’ description of “Mordors” in his book, it is seldom I feel longing to visit those countries (except Iran and several few other places), although I learn a lot about human life and the world every chapter.

But King Lear at the Bodleian Library courtyard! That makes me really envious and makes me think why I am not living in Oxford or at least in England …

It is so truthfully and painfully expressed in King Lear, as Mr Hitchens writes, the human capacity “to believe their enemies are their friends, and to be beguiled by oily flattery and displeased by truthful love”.

Curiously enough when King Lear goes insane, he begins to “see” the true face of reality. Lear talking to a blind man;

“A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”(IV)

I'm a deist, if that's important- so they're not 'my faiths'. However, we didn't become enlightened when we started to ignore religion, what happened (more or less in the 17th century, but with origins before then) was that we started questioning the logical consistency of our beliefs. For example, whether 'miraculous' events were compatible with the notion of a law-like universe - that wasn't a consequence of atheism but of the idea that god was a rational and law-like being. In fact, no-one ever thought that science was incompatible with religion until the late nineteenth-century. Oddly enough, by that time most 'superstitious' beliefs were long gone, and religious persecution was long in the past in western culture. I have a suspicion that the idea didn't enter the popular imagination until around the 1920s/30s. It would be interesting to see the views of a professional historian of science on this. (It doesn't follow from this of course, that the claims of any particular religion are right, of course.) But don't take my word for it. If you read histories of science written by professionals, they should make it clear.

"It’s about an actual, but mysterious meeting between two of the greatest scientific minds of all time. [...] Niels Bohr was a very good man who lived well and courageously."

From a Radio 4 'Science Now' review on the publication of 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!', a volume of anecdotes of the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman:

"A lot of scientists appear even if only very briefly in a very favourable light; I thought it was very good the bit about when Bohr came - I suppose it was to Los Alamos or somewhere, and there were various discussions, and Feynman, by his own report, behaved in a fairly tiresome manner, and said, 'Surely not? Why do you believe that? Is that certain?' and so forth; and Bohr asked for him to have a special conference with him and said, "I want him, he disagrees.""

King Lear is Shakepeare's best play.better than Hamlet.The depiction of how a selfish political act by an individual (Lear's decision to abdicate and divide his kingdom) leads to a descent into murder,torture and war is a timeless story.Shakespeare is the supreme political writer.The downfall of Thatcher brings to mind the plotters in Julius Caesar with lean and hungry Heseltine as her Cassius..Richard the Third pretty much depicts the way outsider Hitler manoeuvred his way into power with Hindenberg in the role of Edward the Fourth and Ernst Rohm as his Buckingham.Even plays not overtly political like Othello are basically just that.every political party and corporation has its honest Iago spinning his malign plots in the background.

Jihadi John has interpreted religion as he wishes. And that is the flaw with religion. It is open to wide interpretation and that makes it man's property, not God's. "Got mit Uns" was impressed on Nazi belt buckles.

"Is that [explaining science] what religion is for ?"

Yes. It purported to tell us how we began and attempted to answer all questions. But it didn't. And that was for the simple reason that it couldn't.

"...the origins of science lie in the concept of a rational deity ..." And after that - as with all things universal - science EVOLVED and became utterly outstanding.

"Silly athiests who think that science negates religion"

I'll take that without getting shirty about it or being rude (I've heard our host criticise Richard Dawkins when he was being humble).

Your faiths cured no-one but it often takes credit when the sick are cured. Your faiths condemns famine and pestilence yet often causes it (contraception/restriction on food stuffs/religious wars)

It is most definitely the case that post Christian Britain has social problems but it has not fallen apart - yet - and when it does that will be at the behest of Political Correctness which - incredibly - affords special dispensation to religious bigotry. Because - for some reason - if someone believes God says its so they can rape little girls and go ahead with FGM with virtual impunity.

Our religion wasn't much better until we started to ignore it and that was when we first began to become truly enlightened.

We have a golden opportunity - with science close to its zenith - to put medieval practice and belief in its appropriate place and give religion a proper (low volume) voice in society.

Otherwise which of those voices do we listen to ? There are so many to choose from ? They can't all be right. Ergo I invoke Occams Razor and conclude that all of them are wrong.

I saw Copenhagen in the 1990s and acquired a copy of The Virus House that Frayn used as a source. Interesting that the German atomic programme was disrupted by the strategic bombing campaign's destruction of several of the factories and labs connected with it. A case of attacking the known or unknown unknowns given the paucity of targeting information available during wartime.

The atheists in question would be inoffensive, as are believers in many kinds of nonsense, if only they would keep their materialistic faith to themselves and not insist on trying to make proselytes of the rest of us. One contributor here, if memory serves, was happy to put in writing his opinion that he could not allow the possibility of free will, or the 'sanctity of life', because neither was palpably evident in the human body. I suppose he imagines they would be a kind of gland, or a ganglion.

The peculiar thinking that results in statements like this has, of course, nothing to do with science or the scientific method but follows from faith in the dogma that everything can, and will, be known and understood--and then perhaps dismissed as mundane. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that two leading proponents of this rather dismal, self-important view went on record here some time ago to the effect that they had never been moved to tears by poetry. They are, no doubt, practical down-to-earth men not given to flights of fancy. I think we can take it for granted that a great scientist like Mr Heisenberg had a rich and varied imagination; this is not necessarily true of even the most competent technician.

For evidence of miraculous or at any rate mysterious or inexplicable events, we need look no further than the recent 'Summer Timetable' thread, in which a single, uncontroversial sentence posted by Mr Hitchens has called forth, so far, 470 comments comprising, at a very rough estimate, some 100,000 words; the equivalent of a short novel, in quantity if not insight.
Not exactly loaves and fishes but not too shabby as 'virtual' achievements go.

That was probably the only public declaration made by Heisenberg on science that wasn't tested.

Of 'these two regions of thought' one is subject to rigorous investigation and peer review, the other isn't. The body of work transcends the man. Scientists are now contemplating beyond the architecture of the universe.

They still have no proof of God.

Religion is the only subject by which 'no proof' is considered to be proof.

Were we not a multicultural and Balkanised society I would be quite content with our nation's moderate religion having an exalted position. As it is I see us becoming very conflicted over this issue.

Actually, the origins of science lie in the concept of a rational deity that presides over a rational universe, constrained by persistent natural laws, which are accessible via a portion of that reason which is in the human mind. This is well-known to all serious historians of science. That view is not restricted to any particular religion (it existed in Ancient Greece, and among the Muslims in the golden age of Arab science) and obviously can't be used to support the more specific beliefs of any particular religions, but it is certainly a fact of history. The origins of empiricism are not so clear, but may be connected with a view in the middle ages that God could have made the universe any way it liked, but made it this way, so we ought to try and investigate it in a systematic way, in order to find out what god's thoughts were.

As for Jihadi John, does he believe in a wise, benevolent, rational being who created (or maintains) a universe of consistent, rational natural law? I doubt it. If he does, then he needs to think of the contradictions between his actions and what he claims to believe. But I suspect he's really someone with a grudge against the world, who has found an outlet for that in extremist Islam a vent for all his anger and resentment (because obviously, emotions are self-justifying) and has projected all his own problems and hatreds onto external reality, and has a concept of a supreme being that is not much different from the Gnostic demiurge - capricious, malevolent, disordered, with all the bad qualities of human beings. But there's nothing new about that either.

Science, after all, means 'knowledge'. Notwithstanding the fact that contemporary loose language confuses 'science' and 'technology' (what would once have been called 'Arts'), when we say science we mean empirical science. There is nothing wrong with that provided we realise its limitations – and sadly, few do. We all have senses of different quality and none of us have perfect senses. Therefore the knowledge derived via such senses is bound to be imperfect even before we bring our puny powers of analysis to bear on what we have observed. So we acquire some knowledge of what the material world does - what it did before we showed up, what it will continue to do after we have gone and what it would do even were we not here to observe it - and we measure and quantify it in terms of the familiar (the second, the inch, the kilogramme etc.); but nobody understands it. So science, let alone religion, doesn't explain itself. Explanations there are none. However, the knowledge thus acquired, imperfect and inadequate though it is, turns out to be useful for making all kinds of interesting and, in their way, truly wonderful machines – everything from the bone-shaker and the steam engine to the microchip. These wonderful machines bewilder a great many people. Thus it is that technology, not religion, is the contemporary opiate of the masses.

Religion, clearly, contains the Latin prefix re- (again) followed by 'link' (cf. French 'lien', “chain”, “bond”) and so means to re-establish a broken connection, by implication with God. How is it possibly fair or reasonable to require it to “explain” our feeble and pretentious pokings about into matter?

Nor is it true to say that religion checks either the imagination or the potential for realisation. That isn't just false, it is an inversion of the truth. Anyone who is theistic must realise that we live in a universe of infinite possibilities; it follows directly from the concept of an omnipotent, totally independent and personal God.

Kevin Peat writes : 'Michael Frayn writes a play about a 'mysterious' meeting (which he wasn't at), from which a quote is taken from the fictional dialogue to argue the existence of God.'

No, he doesn't. Nor do I say he does. Heisenberg's quoted words appear nowhere in the play, to which they would be marginally relevant. They are taken from a lecture he delivered when he was awarded the Romano Guardini prize in 1974, two years before his death. The lecture was called 'Scientific and Religious Truth'

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